As Newtown, Conn., and America mourns the children and women murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School, it’s hard to find joy in this holiday. Grief grips our hearts, even 4,000 miles away here in Homer. In thinking of the death by gun of 28 people — including the troubled man accused of killing his mother, Nancy Lanza, and those at the school — we also have to think of our own local losses. We have been fortunate in this small town not to have had a massacre, but death by gun is no stranger here. Since the summer, our town has seen a murder, an attempted shooting of an Alaska State Trooper and several suicides.

The tragedy at Newtown, and the mass murders before it in Aurora, Colo., Tucson, Ariz., Virginia Tech, and Columbine, has restarted a national debate on gun control. Should military-type assault rifles and large-capacity magazines be banned? Should sales at gun shows come under the same restrictions as at a sporting goods store?

Our conversation on guns should be larger, though. We need to open our minds, open our hearts and listen to each other. We need to go beyond gun control and look at why we have violence.

America has a culture of violence. If we took away every gun, destroyed every bullet, the violence might be less lethal, but it would still be there. Spouses and domestic partners would still beat on each other. Parents would still harm their children. People would still kill themselves.

Sen. Mark Begich has called for addressing the issue of mental health: “There is no doubt that we must do more to keep our families and communities safe and that is why I believe we must start with the ever-pressing issue of mental health services in this country.”

Our culture also desensitizes us to violence. Bloody movies and video games make shooting seem unreal. Evan Ramsey, the man who in February 1997 killed a 15-year-old boy and his high school principal in Bethel, later said, “I honestly believed that if you shoot somebody, that they would get back up.”

Drugs and alcohol often fuel our inhumanity.

All of us need to take a hard look at why we tolerate violence and what we can do to end it.

“These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change,” President Barack Obama said in Newtown.

In this season of peace, when peace may seem impossible, we can change. The spirit of the season, after all, is change.